Confirmed: Russian and Syrian jets are on standby to shoot down any Turkish or Saudi plane that crosses into Syria. Turkey is prepared to close the Bosporus and attack Russian ships in the Mediterranean.

Turkey has begun continuous shelling of YPG Kurds (pro-American) inside Syria for at least 3 hours; this is seen as a prelude to a ground attack on anti-ISIS forces inside Syria.

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Munich “cessation of hostilities” is off to a rocky start

[ Editor’s Note, 2:30 pm ET: VT is back up after being hacked for several hours when one key story was up — the one below on the Saudis moving tactical nukes to Turkey, to be closer to the NW Syrian battleground, and the NATO tripwire for any attack that might be launched on Syria after some staged provocation.

This comes the day after Munich started, with the Turks shelling Azaz, 4 to 5 miles south of the Turkish border — the last town on that supply road to Aleppo.

With this shelling, Turkey is in effect saying they are initiating an “artillery buffer zone”, something most would consider a repudiation of the Munich cessation of hostilities. If the Kurds and Syria can move closer to their own borders, they can mine the roads to slow down any Turkish advance.

We also suspect today’s hacking to have been an eavesdropping event to delay a new story we are working on — how Turkey has purchased swine flu from an employee at the Lugar lab in Georgia, which already has killed 1000 in Ukraine, been released in Russia, and surprise, surprise beginning to show up in the Turkish Kurdish resistance.

A $30-million budgeted American Research lab in Tbilisi that came in at $100 million with a contractor making a lot of money. Are you surprised?

This morning our sources are reporting that Turkey is bringing into the Syrian Kurdish region, via the age old ambulance cover, a part of its biological weapons warfare that it thinks it will be able to deny. But after the big Sarin gas attack in Syria that was tracked back to Turkish involvement, the Lugar lab and other bioweapons undercover labs ringing the Russian Federation have been watched very carefully for the obvious threat that they were.

Silverman paid a price for his reporting

VT readers know that Henry Kamens and our own Jeffrey Silverman have been all over the story for several years now, to the extent that the Lugar lab had to be “cleaned” for a press tour.

We do not know how much US and NATO cooperation there may be, if any, on this. Erdogan was busting a guy this week for denouncing the US for working with the Syrian Kurds, a touché to Erdogan for not really fighting ISIL, but using that as a cover to run his war on the Kurds.

Turkey and the Saudis see the jihadis being rolled up in Syria in a couple of months, so they are holding little territory to bargain with at the future peace talks, if there ever are any.

We have a touch and go situation in the success of the Syrian-Russian anti-terrorism campaign. The US coalition, the Arab League, all those that supported the overthrow of Syria have a lot of egg on their face, as support for Assad and the Syrian army is going up every day — not the kind of situation in which the regime change crowd want to negotiate. You just can’t make this stuff up… Jim W. Dean ]

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Tactical nukes will be used in any major preemptive strike to assure retaliation ability is destroyed on day one

– First published … February 13, 2016 –

Our sources confirm that Saudi Arabia is prepared to bring tactical nuclear weapons to Turkey. Turkey already has 84 nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base under NATO control. We have confirmed that both Saudi Arabia and Turkey have American planes, both F 15 and F 16 modified for nuclear attack by Israel. America has removed all nuclear attack planes from Turkey under orders of President Obama.

We have confirmed that Turkey has a contingency plan to seize the NATO nuclear arsenal at Incirlik with the help of Saudi Special Forces, who have been trained in Israel to defeat US nuclear weapon security measures.

We have a confirmation that Saudi Arabia is moving lanes to the American nuclear base in Turkey. This week US planes bombed civilians in Aleppo from this same base. Word from Saudi Arabia and Russia is that they expect a full scale Turkish invasion in response to Kurdish YPG consolidation, with American help, of new positions which would block Turkey’s access to its ISIS partners in Syria.

Both high level Russian and Syrian sources contacted this morning have confirmed that a much broader war is imminent.

Turkey has officially announced that they are ready to move into Syria against the US backed YPG who they deem as a terrorist group. Turkey has yet to attack ISIS and is only fighting Kurds with the exception of the Erbil regional group in Iraq. There is conclusive evidence that both Erbil and Ankara are fully behind ISIS.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

“They (Saudi military) came, did a reconnaissance of the base. At the moment it is not clear how many planes will come.”

Turkey supplies ISIS in Iraq through the Duhok road aided by the Erbil regime, who have turned against both Baghdad and other Kurdish forces.

Turkey’s army has shelled targets near the city of Azaz in northwestern Syria, Kurdish sources on the ground tell RT.

The Turkish shelling of Kurdish positions has continued for more than three hours almost uninterruptedly, a Kurdish source told RT, adding that the Turkish forces are using mortars and missiles and firing from the Turkish border not far from the city of Azaz in the Aleppo Governorate.

The source also said that that there were casualties, but the exact number is unknown. The Turkish forces fired shells at the villages of Malikiya and Tannab, a source told RT, citing a statement by the Jaysh al-Thuwwar group.

A source in the Turkish government confirmed to Reuters that the Turkish military had shelled Kurdish militia targets near Azaz on Saturday.

“The Turkish Armed Forces fired shells at PYD positions in the Azaz area,” the source said, referring to the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Ankara views as a terrorist group.

A Kurdish official confirmed to Reuters that the shelling had targeted the Menagh air base located south of Azaz.

According to the official, the base had been captured by the Jaysh al-Thuwwar rebel group, which is an ally of PYD and a member of the Syria Democratic Forces alliance.

Syrian Kurds are actively engaged in the fight against the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorist group and have been recently described as “some of the most successful” forces fighting IS jihadists in Syria by US State Department spokesman John Kirby, AFP reports.

Earlier, the US also called the PYD an “important partner” in the fight against Islamic State, adding that US support of the Kurdish fighters “will continue.”

Saudi Arabia is to deploy military jets and personnel to Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base in the south of the country, Ankara said. The base is already used by the US Air Force for their sorties in Syria.

The deployment is part of the US-led effort to defeat the Islamic State terrorist group, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

“At every coalition meeting, we have always emphasized the need for an extensive result-oriented strategy in the fight against the Daesh terrorist group,” he said, referring to IS by an Arabic-language abbreviation.

Cavusoglu spoke to the Yeni Şafak newspaper after addressing a security conference in Munich, Germany, where the Syrian crisis was one of the top issues on the agenda.

“If we have such a strategy, then Turkey and Saudi Arabia may launch a ground operation,” he added, fueling concerns that a foreign troop invasion may soon further complicate the already turbulent situation in the war-torn country.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE voiced their readiness to contribute troops for a ground operation in Syria on the condition that the US would lead the intervention. Damascus and its key regional ally, Iran, warned that such a foreign force would face strong resistance.

The US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have shared goals in Syria, as all three want the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad to be toppled by rebel forces. On other issues they differ. For example, the US supports Kurdish forces in Syria who scored significant military victories against IS, but Turkey considers them terrorists and is targeting them with airstrikes.

Russia, which supports the government of Bashar Assad, seeing it as the only regional force capable of defeating IS on the ground, has warned against a ground intervention, which, Moscow believes, would only serve to prolong the war in Syria.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev called on his Western counterparts “not to threaten a ground operation” in Syria, stressing that Moscow is doing its utmost to pave the way for a lasting peace in the war-torn country.

Russia and other leading world powers have brought Damascus and a number of rebel groups to negotiations and leveraged them into agreeing to a ceasefire. The agreement, however, remains shaky, as neither side trusts the other, and the unity of the rebel delegation remains questionable. The terrorist groups IS and Al Nusra Front are not part of the talks.

Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev told German media that sending foreign troops into Syria could unleash “yet another war on Earth.” The warning follows increasingly aggressive statements made by Saudi Arabia and Turkey amid Bashar Assad’s gains in Aleppo.

“All sides must be compelled to sit at the negotiating table, instead of unleashing yet another war on Earth,” Medvedev told Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper. “Any kinds of land operations, as a rule, lead to a permanent war. Look at what’s happened in Afghanistan and a number of other countries. I am not even going to bring up poor Libya.”

The PM was commenting on recent statements from Saudi Arabia claiming that it was ready to send ground troops to Syria, should Washington lead the way.

“The Americans and our Arab partners must think well: do they want a permanent war? Do they think they can really quickly win it? It is impossible, especially in the Arab world. Everyone is fighting against everyone there,” Medvedev added. The interview was published on the eve of the International Syria Support Group meeting in Munich, where the cessation of hostilities in Syria became a top item on the agenda.

Meanwhile, the situation in Syria has been heating up, as Syrian government troops have been making advances in the northern city of Aleppo, half of which is considered to be under the control of anti-government rebel groups. The same region has also been inundated with terrorist groups, such as Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), Ahrar al-Sham, and Al-Nusra Front, which are all being targeted by Russian as well as US-led air campaigns.

At the same time, the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have recaptured a former military airbase from jihadists near the Turkish-Syrian border, reportedly with the support of Russian air strikes. The base is located near the rebel-held town of Azaz in Aleppo province.

Turkey, meanwhile, continues to insist that the Kurdish militia fighting IS are terrorists just as the Kurdish rebels fighting inside Turkey. Ankara, which has been criticized for bombing Kurds inside Syria instead of helping to fight IS, has recently fallen out with Washington over America’s support for the Kurdish YPG.

On the Syrian battlefield, Turkey openly supports anti-Assad rebel groups. The latest statement by Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu, who pledged to return a “historical debt” to Turkey’s “Aleppo brothers,”gave new rise to speculations over a looming Turkish ground invasion of Syria.

The situation has prompted fears of a possible military clash between world powers backing different sides of the Syrian conflict, with hopes that the Munich talks could de-escalate the deadlock. While some Western leaders have openly called upon Russia to stop supporting Assad with airstrikes, the communique that was agreed upon after five long hours of discussions does not directly mention any downsizing of strikes. Instead, it calls for a“nationwide cessation of hostilities” over the period of one week, although it exempts terrorist groups from the potential ceasefire.

In the latest alarming episode, Russian and American militaries traded accusations over the bombing of civilian infrastructure in Aleppo. Russia’s Defense Ministry said two US Air Force A-10 warplanes had destroyed nine facilities in the city, with the Americans shifting the blame onto Russia’s air campaign afterwards. Russian jets, however, had not targeted any civilian areas and were operating 20 kilometers away, according to the ministry. The spat started on Wednesday with the US alleging the destruction of “two main hospitals in Aleppo by Russian and regime attacks.”

From February 4 to 11, the Russian Air Force performed over 500 sorties, eliminating nearly 1,900 terrorist facilities in the Syrian provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama, Deir ez-Zor, Daraa, Homs, Al-Hasakah and Raqqa, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the US is seeking to boost the anti-Islamic State coalition it is heading in Iraq and Syria by officially drawing in NATO as a member, AFP reported. While some NATO member states are already active members of the coalition, the military alliance’s chief, Jens Stoltenberg, said their increased role could bring “significant development” and “unique capabilities” which include “building partner capacity, training ground forces and providing stabilization support.”

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has been lobbying for greater participation by NATO in the war on Islamic State, giving a dramatic Thursday speech on “a new stage in the coalition campaign to defeat ISIL” and adding the countries would then be able “look back after victory and remember who participated in the fight.”

The alliance, however, has already found itself in one uneasy situation related to the conflict, when it had to back Turkey’s downing of a Russian Su-24 bomber that was striking militant positions in Syria. While Ankara rushed to seek NATO’s support following the aggressive and clearly avoidable move, and the bloc delivered this support on an official level, reports cited sources taking part in a NATO emergency meeting at the time as expressing discontent with the rash unilateral move by the Turks.

assange

At midday on Friday 5 February, 2016 Julian Assange, John Jones QC, Melinda Taylor, Jennifer Robinson and Baltasar Garzon will be speaking at a press conference at the Frontline Club on the decision made by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on the Assange case.